rtraction

AboutUs

Team Bios

 

David Billson, President and Co-founder.

As our fearless leader, David spends most of his time finding new work to keep us busy. As the face of the company, he also spends considerable time with clients to identify and find solutions to their communication and technical challenges. As a father of five, he doesn't have to look far to find something fun to do when he's away from the office. Personally, he has a strong sense of commitment to family, friends and community - which are all the same thing in his mind. He brings this keen social sense to rtraction, and has been instrumental in ensuring that the company follows through on its commitment to corporate social responsibility. The most satisfying work moment for David was when rtraction received the HOPE award from the London Epilepsy Support Center. A busy individual, his greatest annoyance in life is simply how quickly time passes. In his own words, "It seems that every time I blink a new month has gone by."
 
Shawn Adamsson, Director of Operations.

One of the original three founders of rtraction, Shawn describes his role as being a "cat herder". He ensures all of the work is done on time, on budget and spends a lot of his time facilitating the dialogue between clients, coders and the creatives. Shawn’s approach to life is based on the belief that it doesn't matter what you're doing if you enjoy the company of the people you are doing it with. Shawn dislikes nothing more than a closed mind, and has fond memories of trips he's taken with friends and co-workers. The highlight of his travels is the time he dragged some friends out in the dark and rain in the muddy hills outside San Francisco to take a spectacular nighttime photo of the Golden Gate bridge wreathed in fog.
 
Josh Dow, Project Lead.

One of the three founding members of rtraction, perhaps Josh sums up what he does best in his own words: "My business cards tell me I'm the project lead but I'll always be a programmer at heart." To him, the most memorable moment in his career was the day rtraction incorporated. A survivor of the dot-com-bubble, he is excited by the phenomenal resurgence and growth of the commercial Internet and eagerly follows the emergence of new technologies. Outside of work he is kept busy planning and implementing "fun" improvements to his first house. A true child of the seventies, Josh's greatest annoyance is the gross under-use of the cowbell in music today.
 
nik harron, Creative Director.

An eleven year veteran of the advertising agency business, nik is a recent addition to the rtraction team. In his own words, nik is happiest when he's creating things. An avid photographer and painter, he finds that he gets bored easily and so continues to pursue and learn as much as he can about making stuff. His favourite social activities are the outdoor cinema nights he runs in his driveway during the warmer weather and sitting on his porch jawing with the neighbours. He has eclectic tastes in music, films and people and loves to know what's the latest thing going on. Recently he has given up on the novel, and finds it's more relaxing to read comic books after a long day at the office.
 
David "Millar" Millar, Developer / Analyst.

Millar, as he is known around the office, is a rock-solid, workhorse coder. If anyone really understands what a chunk of code is doing it's him. Family, friends, sports, and his fiancee are the most important things in life to him. Recently he had the best travel experience of his life - proposing to his fiancee Kate on a cruise through the Western Caribbean. Although planning his wedding is keeping him very occupied, he still finds the time to play several sports and shoot the breeze with his friends. A humanitarian at heart, his positive demeanour is rattled most when "society makes decisions without considering more relevant information from the present", and people "make self indulgent decisions that hurt society and everyone else".
 
Stephen Ash, Developer / Analyst.

Stephen has been with rtraction for over 2 & 1/2 years. In his spare time he enjoys spending time with his niece and nephew, and engaging in the high-tech sport of Geocaching. He firmly believes that the relationships you cultivate are the most important thing in life. "Nobody lays on their deathbed and wishes they'd spent more time at the office." When Stephen is not tromping out in the woods with his GPS in search of buried treasure, he enjoys making music and singing occasionally in a Southern-Gospel quartet. Failing everything else, no matter what life throws his way, give him a cat curled up in his lap and he'll always be happy.  
 


Kyle Pearn, Developer / Analyst.

As the newset addition to the rtraction developer team Kyle plans to "become a .NET programming machine". Outside of work his interests are more eclectic, ranging from spending time with his son and daughter, jamming on guitar with his band, and growing his collection of snakes which currently includes a Burmese Python. (FYI - the Burmese Python is one of the world's largest snakes, and can reach lengths of up to 25 feet, weighing as much as 400 pounds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_Python).
 

 
Jeremy Richardson, Developer.

Jeremy describes his favourite work moment with rtraction as the time the weekly team meetings were renamed to "Cake" to help improve morale. The initial "cake" was a resounding success with three employees contributing unsolicited desserts. Jeremy has a love hate relationship with computers , and in contemplative moments he has been known to muse on the fact that his life's work is in reality a long string of 1's and 0's. A true Canadian, Jeremy listens mostly to Canadian Indie Rock, and claims his most memorable moment was the time the Jays took the World Series. In his own words, "Lucky they did it twice as I'm not sure I'll experience that in my lifetime again." When he's not banging code into his keyboard at work, Jeremy is banging out beats on his drumkit for his band "The Favourite Game", which has been together for over 10 yrs. For more information you can check out their website at www.thefavouritegame.ca.
 
Noah Stewart, Developer.

Noah is a front-line kind of guy. His work at rtraction, in his own words, is "Me in the trenches, bullets whizzing overhead. I’m armed only with my wits and a keyboard, fighting brutal enemies like software bugs and browser inconsistencies. The generals draw up the plans, the sergeants help keep my helmet on. The battle may be tough, but it is always won." Noah maintains a consistently positive attitude and endeavours to find the fun in whatever situation he's in, and if there's no fun to be found then he makes his own. His favourite example is the time he got a flat tire on a moonless night in a remote, mountainous area in northern BC. Undeterred, putting aside vivid memories of the movie "Deliverance", he jovially followed two locals down an unlit trail to a secluded farm where his tire was fixed and he ate the best homemade rabbit stew he's ever had.
 
Elvin Ruff, Systems Analyst.

As our primary technical support operative, Elvin is a stranger at the office spending the vast majority of his time off-site installing and maintaining our client's networks. Elvin is an avid "World of Warcraft" fan, so long hours hunting down and squashing glitches in hardware and software come naturally to his warrior sensibilities. Fun and games aside, Elvin treasures his wife and family above all else. Elvin wishes he had more time to go on a vacation, remembering how much fun he had last time he got away - in Grade 3 when the family drove to Disney World in Florida. He fondly recalls that the pancakes he had there for breakfast were good.

 
Andrei Zvonkov, Developer.

As a creative father of 3, finding an internal balance in life is important to Andrei. While he spends the majority of his time at rtraction working on front-end interface design - turning designers' static artwork into dynamic web interfaces, for fun he prefers to get his hands covered in flour perfecting his artisan/home-made bread baking techiques. Andrei believes in staying in the moment and enjoying what you are doing, both at work and in his personal life. His favourite travel moment recalls floating on his back at dusk in a little lake in Belarus, staring at the full moon.
 
Steve Anderson, Developer.

Steve enjoys variety in life, and is not afraid to strike out on his own and try new things. At 16, when he was working at McDonald's, he took a notion to travel and hopped on a plane to California to explore San Diego, Los Angeles and northern Mexico. Steve is one of rtraction's growing complement of musical developers and enjoys playing the guitar and piano. An avid athlete, Steve fondly recalls the rush of the hit and sprint from his high-school football days, a feeling which he describes as that of being "invincible; untouchable". Speaking of which, Steve just may be rtraction's most invincible developer, as he's currently working his way towards a blackbelt in Shorinji-ryu karate.